So...What? -Conclusion

All around the scene in front of me, people were joining me out in the parking lot surveying the damage outside. I asked a few folks how things looked in the upper floors of the building. It seems that aside from no power (although the generators were running). Apparently there is some problem with the distribution and at least I heard that the fourth floor and third floor office space was without power.

I was kind of reluctant to re-enter the building. My first inclination was to get off the property, return home and see if there was any bad news in my neighborhood. There was a light rain starting to fall and the wind was picking up again so, I reluctantly re-entered the building and checked in with the fire wardens were all trying to get a head count and see if anyone was injured. Thankfully, at least as far as I had heard, there were no injuries to anyone in the building.

I walked upstairs to see if I could help anyone within IT. I was certain because of the power outages that there was likely some system restoration underway. I found the Infrastructure manager and asked politely how things were going.

“Well, I think all the systems weathered the storm. The network however has some telecommunications issues. I think there was a problem on the third floor that still needs to be addressed. “

“I see, well, what are officially supposed to be doing right now?”

“The business continuity folks are convening and I’m sure there will be some announcements soon. Just go back to your desk and wait…”

Yeah, that should work I thought. I wandered over to my cubicle and saw that surprisingly nothing much was out of place. The side of the building my desk was situated on was away from the where the brunt of the storm passed through. I picked up the phone and found that I had a dial tone. I experimentally called my home again. My wife picked up and informed me that she had heard there were still some storms in the area that folks were being advised to stay indoors.

“Okay well, you do that. I’ll be here… for now…”

After about a half hour, we started to hear that “all non-essential personnel were allowed to leave.” We were told to check in with our supervisor and call the usual number to see if the office was going to open tomorrow.

I checked with my supervisor (by cell phone. I had no idea where he was). He said that it was fine to leave so I picked up my computer bag and other belongings and proceeded outside to my car. Once I had gotten outside I noticed that the wind had really started to blow hard again. This coupled with a fair amount of rain made me uneasy.

I had a casual conversation with some of the other staffs that were hanging out in the doorway of the building waiting to see if the rain would let up before proceeding out to the vehicles. I stubbornly chose to just walk ahead to my truck.

As I neared my truck, I saw a small woman whose car had suffered some damage and she was considering how road worthy the vehicle was. I talked with her briefly and then all of a sudden she looked up and knew something was wrong. She was staring intently over my right shoulder.

I spun around in time to see the funnel cloud forming about 100 yards away. It was hovering about 150 feet off the ground but the winds were now increasing at a frightening pace. I turned back and saw that the woman had turned and ran back towards the building.

Here we go again…